As all of us will most likely now be aware the Winter Olympic Games have started in Vancouver Canada. It’s now day four of the games and that means the first day of cross-country skiing events. These events are obviously close to my heart as something of a cross-country ski enthusiast and it is great to know that for the first time in 16 years Great Britain will have representatives in these events. Andrew Musgrave and Andrew Young will be competing in the Mens 15km freestyle event whilst Fiona Hughes will compete in the Ladies 10km. A shout out also to Ireland’s PJ Barron who will be racing as well in this afternoon’s events and trains with the rest of the British team.
Andrew Young and Andrew Musgrave Ahead of the Olympics (photo credit: PJ Barron)
This is a fantastic achievement not just for the three individuals in question but for all the coaching team who have helped get them there over the past ten years, British Nordic Development Squad coaches Roy Young, Anghared Evans, Ekaterina Rachel, Keith Spencer, Marek Pasterny, Pete Gurney, Roger Homyer and Steve Boyd and Al Dargie as well as club coaches at a number of local clubs across the UK such as the Cairngorm Biathlon and Nordic Ski Club and Huntly Nordic Ski Club.
It is also testament to the competitiveness of the rest of the squad that these three individuals have been pushed to this level of performance. It is perhaps overlooked when the Olympics comes around and the focus is on the top three places, just how much work goes into preparing, training, resting and equipping all the athletes in the field, not just to get them to the start line today but every day over the past four years since the last games or longer. There has also been a huge amount of effort and commitment from a significant number of athletes who didn’t make it this year and whom having missed out this time are already planning the next four years to take them to Soichi 2014, not to mention all the British Championships, World Junior Championships, World Cup and World Championship campaigns in the interim.
Indeed, four years ago if you had asked me what my central ambition in life was, it was to be on the start line alongside these guys, I gave it my best shot but its a hundred times harder than those guys out there will make it look today. That is a credit not only to them but their coaches, families and supporters no matter the results today. Indeed, it is so great from a Motivational perspective to see all of them and Andrew Musgrave in particular, in their interviews for the BBC, talk about how these Games are about experience and providing performance benchmarks for future years performance. As anybody who has read up on Motivational Theory or competed in elite level sport will know, successful performance and sustaining motivated behaviour comes as a result of focusing on your own (intrinsic) performance, not simply measuring it based on extrinsic rewards such as medals, money or praise.
Whilst it is these three young skiers that will represent all of us in Great Britain in the races this evening. I believe that what they and all their competitors from all the other nations have achieved and will continue to achieve represents a way of thinking and a behaviour that all of us can benefit from considering:
How we work together in teams or families to achieve our shared objectives – how do we support, share and inspire ourselves and those around to achieve our personal and shared aims, whatever those aims might be.
How we reflect, think and introspect upon our own performance – how does it fit with our personal values and aims and how does it compare with those around us – is our day to day behaviour going to take us where we want to be in four to five years time?
Do we enjoy our day to day experiences and the challenges and pleasures they throw up enough for our long terms aims to be worthwhile? We’re all aware of the phrase “Life’s too short…” How do we manage and regulate our own day to day performances and how we interact with the world around us to ensure we are fulfilling our potential and contributing as much as possible to those around us and our dreams and ambition?
Where do you want to be in four years time? And for the designers and behavioural change professionals amongst us, how do we design products, systems and services that support this level of experience, thought and performance? What else can we learn from the Olympics and Olympians in terms of how to energise and support human motivation and performance?
Good luck to Andrew, Andrew and Fi as well as to all of the rest of us!
This is a fairly comprehensive presentation of the underlying philosophy and research behind my masters work in helping designers visualise and support motivation in the design of everyday products and services. I’ve obviously talked about the development of this work extensively on this blog so I’d like to take the chance to thank all of you who have visited and contributed comments and support – its helped me refine and adapt my ideas thus far and I really appreciate it!
I’m hoping to add an audio summary of the presentation at some point, but otherwise the presentation gives an overview of the foundations of my framework of motivation in design, the research behind it and then a few examples of products and services that have either been directed by this conceptualisation or whose success as ‘motivational platforms’ can be interpreted by using the framework.
People may also recognise a few of the case studies from the Nordic Service Design Conference – thanks to the presenters their for their explanations, this presentation also served as an opportunity for me to pass on what I’d learned and enjoyed from that conference to my colleagues at the HCDI at Brunel.
As ever comments and questions are gratefully appreciated and if you are interested in finding our more or understanding how this framework can be applied to your own design or service propositions then please get in touch.
In support of his discussion of how managers might support employee Motivation, Julian leverages the same Self Determination Theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000, 2004) that has formed the basis of my own research. His coverage of the Material, Social and Personal drivers of Motivation need little further coverage as I’ve referred to them on my blog and associated discussions using Deci and Ryan’s original terms of Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence. Julian suggests that managers should utilise these three aspects of human psychological capability to help turn ‘extrinsically regulated‘ organisational objectives into ‘identified‘ personal motives of employees. In otherwords, managers should use the prospects of material, social and personal rewards to encourage employees to take ownership of organisational objectives and become more personally intrinsically rewarding. I would also supplement this with Valerand’s, (2003) definition that motivation occurs on “global, contextual and situational” levels of recursion.
As I’ve mentioned in the discussion on Wenovski a great example of an organisation doing this is Zappos, an American online retailer, that uses it’s employees to amongst other things model the clothes they sell. Specifically this example is appealing to an employee’s underlying Relatedness and Competence ‘needs’ and allowing them to fulfill those ‘needs’ on behalf of the organisation, which in turn benefits the organisation’s own Relatedness and Competence objectives, by providing customers with a familiar, down to earth and empathetic marketing touch point. Literally in this case the employee is embodying the organisation. This, if successful, and it is proving very successful for Zappos, will in the long term also enhance the organisations global Autonomy by boosting sales (the material outcome) as well as it’s social outcome (what customers think) and its personal, or personnel outcome by enhancing its relationship with its employees.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset
As one of the commenters on Unstructure Marc Buyens said, “these are not new concepts”, but I think the difference is that re-conceptualising these as motivational constructs or regulatory mechanisms can have quite a powerful effect on the way an organisation manages them. The above diagram indicates another few ways from the literature of conceptualising both how and why to target ‘management interventions’. For example, these help determine at what stage you are energising as opposed to directing employee/customer behaviour and whether or not you are doing so to instil awareness of issues or to reaffirm employee confidence or satisfaction.
Indeed, motivation is all around us, it is the root of our every behaviour and that’s a critical point I’d like to bring to this conversation, motivation whether positive or negative (demotivation) will occur whether you want it to or not. Within your organisation, your staff and colleagues, and yourself. Deci and Ryan’s theory is an organismic one, that is, it perceives that we as humans are naturally predisposed to grow and organically adapt to our environment, seeking out new challenges, responsibilities and recognition in order to fulfil these underlying psychological needs. The question to managers is perhaps best asked, not might you support motivation, but rather how are you currently regulating motivation within your organisation? How are you directing or maintaining the energisation of the behaviour in your organisation?
A very innovative approach to this I discovered yesterday, came via the Swedish TV Licensing Authority with their Tack (Thank You) campaign. Allowing individuals who upon paying their tv licences to submit a picture of themselves and be integrated to a well highly produced and aspirational “thank you” video. Actually, anyone can have a go, which does kind of undermine the point a little, but its powerful stuff – underlining the point that for managers the best way to motivate your employees is to integrate them into the middle of the organisation and allow them to take ownership and participate in the critical issues of the organisation and become an evangelist for them.
From a Self Determination perspective at least, every employee has those Personal ‘Material, Social and Competence ‘Needs” Julian mentions, fulfilment of these results in happiness for the individual. However, because of the nested and recursive nature of self determined behaviour and societies, organisations also have ‘Material, Social and Competence‘ ‘Needs’. The obvious question for managers then is how are you facilitating the fulfilment of both of these first order (happiness) and second order ‘needs’ (success) and in doing so creating a motivated, energised and purposeful organisation? As I shared on Twitter yesterday:
“Success is getting what you want (contextual/global – extrinsic). Happiness is wanting what you get (situational – intrinsic).”
Apologies for the recent blogging hiatus, in large part due to the launch last week of The Ergonomics Real Design Exhibition at the Design Museum which I have been working on over the last year and half. I’m also recently back from the excellent Nordic Service Design Conference in Oslo. I will post more on both of those things in due course. In the meantime, I’ve also been working on my MPhil in Intrinsically Motivating Design and recently developed a model that I hope to validate as a tool to help designers design Intrinsically Motivating and behaviourally self sustaining systems, services and products. I’ve posted this on Wenovski as well so apologies for the cross posting if you’ve already seen it there. I’d really welcome your feedback on this and if you have any questions or would be interested in offering me an opportunity to validate the model then give me shout either in the comments below or at hello@fergusbisset.com.
My research into Human Motivation and its relationship with design has seen me exploring a lot of organismic theories of human behaviour, those are the theories that suggest we are naturally predisposed or energised to grow or seek new challenges, affiliation or environments in order to remain healthy, happy and fulfilled.
Obviously not everyone is in agreement on the underlying mechanisms of human motivation and behaviour, there are many models, but these are issues that we as designers revisit often in the form of the well intentioned but hideously over-cited and rarely understood Maslow’s Hierarchy is based on such a humanist/organismic perspective.
My own research is exploring a newer an more updated model of which I attach an early draft below, one that also represents the iterative and dynamic nature of human behaviour – something that is overlooked in Maslow’s version.
My model and the research that underpins it (predominantly Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory) indicates that in order to remain psychologically fulfilled we need to balance three psychological needs for AUTONOMY (Self Reflection, Independence, Empowerment), RELATEDNESS (Socialisation, Care and Concern for and from others), COMPETENCE (Feelings of efficacy, self control and accomplishment).
Deci and Ryan’s premise (and mine) is that only by balancing and fulfilling these core psychological needs will we be truely HAPPY and HEALTHY. My model attempts to illustrate how these INTRINSIC (some might say INNATE) psychological needs are often balanced against EXTRINSIC design factors and criteria and just as with Maslow’s Hierarchy if we want as designers to design systems and services that leave us feeling fulfilled they will need to address all of these INNATE HUMAN with EXPLICIT DESIGN capabilities and specifications.
If an intentionally or accidentally designed system cannot SELF REGULATE, or as you say Arne, “balance” EXTRINSIC and INTRINSIC demands it ultimately will become unsustainable.
To help make this idea more explicit I will elaborate – much of industrial design is focussed on the SENSORY features of products, services and systems, whilst interaction design and ‘soft design disciplines’ are interested in COGNITIVE levels of interaction. Recently of course, as most of us here will be aware Design has begun to shift towards more ORGANISATIONAL or ‘Service’ perspectives in an attempt to satisfy the ‘NEEDS’ of its users and customers. Or perhaps if I put it more cynically – in an attempt to continue to generate value for stakeholders in the design process. This shift in the focus of design, as is well documented, has occurred as a result of technology that initially enable ‘interfaces’ and more recently high levels of social connectivity and networking.
With my model, I hope to help move design one step closer to exactly the call you’ve made here Arne, by helping designers to understand how their expertise in manipulation of SENSORY, COGNITIVE and ORGANISATIONAL affordances and data can be better focussed on meeting users genuine SOCIAL, COMPETENCE and AUTONOMY needs and in turn designing systems that are by consequence self motivating, sustaining and perhaps as you allude here ‘caring’.
As I’ve reported here before I’m in the middle of an MPhil researching the role of motivation in design and how designers can identify and design to encourage motivated behaviour of a suitable nature. I use the term ‘designer’ loosely as I’m not for one minute proposing that Motivation is something that can be prescribed or even should be. At this stage I am in the process of articulating and visualising from my research to date, what motivation looks like or how people might recognise motivation. Some of you may have seen the Motivational Personas I put up a week or so back – thank you so much to all who commented and contributed their thoughts ideas and experience – I’m very grateful! I’m continuing to develop those.
Motivational Framework v0.1 cc Fergus Bisset (click for larger version)
In parallel to those personas, I’m also keen to develop a “Conceptual Framework of Motivation” and begin to elaborate the different levels on which motivation might be observed in oneself or in others. As most behavioural psychologists would doubtless testify, recognising one’s behaviour is the first step to modifying it.
There appears to be a bit of divide in the behavioural design community as to whether people need to recognise either their existing or desired behaviour in order to change it. Some designers and academics arguing that it may be more effective to change behaviour through design without the user having to be aware of it. I had an animated conversation about this over a beer with Frankie Roberto and Dan Lockton. Like I say this is contentious area, but I’m at this stage putting myself fairly firmly in the camp that believe that if behavioural change is to be sustainable, users have to be aware and undertake deliberate and conscious modification of it. Whilst there are doubtless good arguments for the designer as behavioural ‘god’, and I’m more than happy to hear them and discuss them if you wish to share. I find those arguments somewhat belittling of the people that they aim to ‘help’, the typical line in such circumstances being: “that users aren’t always capable of recognising or understanding their ‘needs’ or ‘capabilities’ “. There was a nice quote via Cassie Robinson on this today:
“Accept me as I am & you’ll make me worse. Treat me as what I’m capable of becoming & you’ll help me to become her”
That is not to say that designer’s should shirk all the responsibility onto the user, indeed with reference to the above it perhaps becomes the designer’s responsibility to help that self-reflective process and aid the user in realising their capabilities. The motivational state should be a shared and negotiated agreement between designer, artefact and user, not a diktat by any of those parties. This also means that the designer has an active role and isn’t just subservient to user demands or “lack of vision or creativity“.
Irrespective of this argument and whether user, designer, user-designer or any other stakeholder in the process you will still need to be able to identify, model and measure motivation or any other form of human behaviour for that matter, if you want to change it. I see my motivational personas as aiding identification, whereas I see the attached model, what I’m calling a Motivational Framework as the next step towards being able to model or synthesise motivated behaviour within the wider context of the product or service lifecycle. This understanding is perhaps fundamental to the process of increasing motivational awareness, capability and thereafter designing to empower users in their motivational capabilities.
I would really welcome any feedback you might have on this, particularly in relation to how this might fit into or overlap with your existing creative practice or world view – and I would especially like to hear from you if it seems incompatible with your own views or established methodology.
My research around the past couple of posts on participatory processes and the responses they have generated have helped focus my attention on an issue that has interested me for some time – the question of “User Needs”.
As the above video nicely represents, many of the early proponents or more successful marketers of ‘design thinking’ have often backhandedly justified the core value that ‘design thinking’ represents in terms of how it better fulfils ‘user needs’. Or at their most honest like in the video above (around 1min in), justified design thinking as the process of converting ‘needs’ to ‘demands’.
In reading and writing about Design, I can’t help but stumble across the term ‘user needs’, without ever finding a particularly compelling definition of what it is in any given context, let alone independent of context.
Having seen that horrible video above a few weeks ago and blown off a bit of steam on Wenovski about it at the time – I couldn’t help but be reminded of it when I read this rather cynical, but actually quite apt historical review of the term ‘user needs’ in a psychology paper today:
“A need is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a force that organizes perception, apperception, intellection, conation and action in such a way as to transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying situation.” (Murray, 1938, pp. 123–124 in Deci and Ryan, 2000).
Aneed is a construct (a convenient fiction or hypothetical
concept) that stands for a force (the physico-chemical
nature of which is unknown) in the brain region, a
force that organizes perception, apperception,
intellection, conation and action in such a way as to
transform in a certain direction an existing, unsatisfying
situation. (pp. 123–124).
As a designer who over the past few years has done quite a bit of rummaging around in psychology books and papers, perhaps with a view to fulfilling some of my own user needs and requirements!? The issue of ‘needs’ whether psychological or physiological is a term that again crops up quite a lot. I’ve long personally held the suspicion that the designerly version of “user needs” was somehow different from the social scientist’s. However, if Murray as cited above is to be believed the term may be used as indiscriminately and cynically in psychology circles as it seems in design circles.
I’m not for a minute disputing that user needs are a real and important driver of both the work of designers and psychologists alike. I wholeheartedly believe that there are designers out there who strive to cater for genuine user needs and requirements. But if so what are they? Do we have a consistent definition amongst us that isn’t just a justification for making things in a way that people will want to buy them?
Is the whole concept of user needs a smokescreen behind which designers just do whatever they want and take your money in the process?
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this so please either tweet them to me @fergusbisset or use the comments box below to let me know what you think. It’ll really help my Masters research into Motivational Design and judging by the video above it might even help our integrity as a community.
This as I interpret it in my own recent contribution to the ‘Design Thinking debate is framing Design from a situated-cognition perspective. Again, saying that the activity of Design is inherently bound to it’s context of activity and therefore it is impossible to completely rely on empirical definitions of what design is or how to practice it. This is a controversial statement and one that can undoubtedly take a bit of time to come to terms with. I’d like to briefly use this post to elaborate how this idea has evolved in my mind and through my recent research into skill acquisition – as such it can be considered the full fat version of my previous post. It contains about 700 words and will therefore take about four minutes to read.
Concrete courtesy of Katorisi and Wikimedia Commons
‘Design Thinking’ of the sort discussed in the past months online debate and that first brought to our collective attention by IDEO represents “a community of practice” that is to say a socially mediated or mutually agreed definition of what design thinking is and how design thinkers should practice it. IDEO has very successfully wielded old media and more recently new media savvy to leverage it’s definition upon the world, thus increasing the awareness or ‘social definition’ or it’s Design Thinking ‘community of practice’. IDEO has done this so successfully in fact that like so many successful communities of practice the term ‘Design Thinking’ has become hugely widespread in its usage and definition, with the fringes of the community taking this definition and it’s processes and bending and moulding them to suit there own purposes and requirements. ‘Design Thinking’ has thus developed ‘social capital’ in terms of it’s ability to describe the tacit knowledge and processes of designers. A term that many people within the design and now business community understand and possess their own definition of.
What is clear however, is that the broader that ‘community of practice’ has become so to has the definition of ‘Design Thinking’. As I argued in my previous post it is now such a broad term that it is being rejected by aspects of the community it is supposed to represent. Indeed, judging by the comments to Collopy’s article it is being rejected by a large proportion of the design community, particularly those at fringes of the established design community in the evolving service design industry who are seeking at present to develop their own ‘community of practice’ and distinguish it from what has gone before.
The term ‘design thinking’ is not concrete. It therefore only exists as a social construct and it’s application is entirely dependent upon, influenced by and subject to its context.
This week I want to look at how then to develop ‘social capital’? Or more specifically how to teach or engage others with the essence or definition of what it is that you do as a service designer? How you become an Expert Design Thinker or Service Designer without an agreed definition of what that actually entails? More importantly, even if you or the institution that educates or employs you possesses such a definition, how do you communicate this to the rest of the world in terms that are meaningful and valuable to them? How do you interact with their “communities of practice”?
This is what might be referred to as establishing Legitimate Peripheral Participation, a process of individuals in this case entering the ‘design thinkers’ or ‘service design’ community and developing their skill gradually over time so as to become experts in the domain. In the terms of my recent research in Skill Acquisition and Public Engagement, this can be described as the transition from abstract observer to concrete experience. This process is perhaps better known as experiential learning.
I’m aware of a number of initiatives or individuals working on projects that are simultaneously attempting to develop ways of guiding people through this process towards concrete experience and education of ‘service design’ or design in general, I highlighted Participle’s Loops Initiative and Small Fish already. In the next few posts I plan to elaborate my own thoughts on how using the whole body and mind is key to developing ‘concrete experiences’ and key to successful engagement.
For this title I have to credit Fred Collopy who’s excellent article this serves as a response to or perhaps continuation of.
For those who haven’t been following, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the blogosphere recently about the term ‘design thinking’ and it’s relationship with systems thinking.
[Just as] MIT [and] Harvard embrace Design Thinking…designers reject it. Wow. Is Design now too big for designers to handle? Do designers ” get” DT?
From the large number of service designers following this discussion and contributing to it, to name but a few Arne van Oosterom, Lucy Kimbell, Lauren Currie, Jonathan Baldwin my award for the best comment has to go to Lucy Kimbell:
“the problem with the phrase Design Thinking is the word design and the word thinking.”
More Intellectual Gymnastics courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr
I’m opening the following idea up for discussion, but I think what we are seeing as design’s Cartesian anxiety develops is a transition away from institutionalised definitions of design or it’s processes. A shift that exacerbates or only continues the long documented product-to-service shift that occured prior to the economic melt down. I’m willing to be wrong about this however and I certainly welcome comments or claims to the contrary.
Personally, I’m fascinated that in the same week as the Twittersphere alleged that IDEO (the original proponent of ‘design thinking’) had laid off half of it’s London office and open sourced it’s toolkits, we are seeing the cracks emerge or as Bruce ventures above, the outright rejection of institutionalised design practices. Maybe I’m getting carried away but it seems that even Harvard’s ever provocative Usman Haque was getting in on the act this week – denouncing the 20th century corporate mentality of ‘straight line thinking’.
To take Collopy’s argument a stage further, design is a process inseparable from action. In being inseparable from action, design as an activity becomes heavily influenced or equally inseparable from it’s environment or context of application. This is something that co-design activities and many service and participatory approaches to design appear to have recognised or at least responded to for some time.
However, if true this places us in the realm of design becoming an activity dependent on situated cognition a point I made indirectly in a previous post here and greater elaborated over the last month here and here. Designers becoming coaches or facilitators in design practice within a smaller, more limited and specialised context, as discussed here.
By further leaps and bound of intellectual gymnastics, and perhaps actual gymnastics if you take the whole mind-body thing too seriously, it’s not illogical to propose that the future of design education might in Haque’s ‘Capitalism 2.0 landscape’ come to rely on a more cognitive-apprenticeship approach of designer’s learning and practicing their craft just as traditional apprenticeships taught woodwork and mechanics.
Indeed in a week where there have been well articulated discussions about the large number of ‘surplus’ design graduates it is great to see Participle’s Loops Initiative and the fantastic Small Fish initiative (both via Redjotter). Design thinking might have died this week but as these two endeavours prove design is very much alive and designers can handle it very well thanks!
I’ve been mulling over Robert Fabricant’s ‘Ethnographic Defense’ post from the beginning of the week. Mulling because when I first read it I got quite worked up and decided to leave it until I’d calmed down a bit. I’ve just now (via @fredcollopy) seen another eerly similar article by Fabricant on Core77 and felt I had to respond on behalf all designers who believe in empowering rather than diminishing their users:
“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”
The article serves as a discussion of how some of the currently employed or mooted Persuasive Design techniques might be considered by users to be “contrived or manipulating”. If I’m being honest, there’s not much more contrived or manipulative than his closing statement in the article, I’ll repeat it again:
“users are not very self-aware. Shouldn’t designers be?”
Hardly a statement likely to breed trust confidence or satisfaction in the design profession by their clients and consumers. Coming a few day’s after I’d read this article by Kicker’s Jen Bove summarising this presentation which also addressed the issue of ‘user needs’. I’ve been struck by the conflicting views of designers in their assessment of user needs and the best ways to repond to them.
There appear to be those designers who view their users as helpless ‘pinballs‘ (thanks Dan!) or those who have belief and trust in their users and wait for it…might even be prepared to involve and empower them in the design process. To clarify it seems Fabricant is positioning himself as only willing to engage with users if as a design professional he maintains a superiority or controlling influence. Whilst Bove in her talk seems more content by empowering her users through co-design and collaboration and admits rightly that as a designer she “has more questions than answers”.
I discussed some of these same ideas in my last post here about user’s expectancy for success – as my current research into designing motivationally engaging experiences demonstrates – the first step to engaging with your users is by making them awareof whatever new technology you want them to use. Thus, in a Motivational Design approach encouraging Awareness is the first responsibility of a designer. Making this new pattern of behaviour or technology relevantinvolves understanding not what user’s need, but rather how they learn and adapt to new situations and circumstances – their skill acquisition process. As a designer it is fundamental that you believe that your users are capable of and you empower them for behavioural change otherwise you, the designer and facilitator of their new behaviour or experience, are damned from the start by damning them.
The challenge as I see it for designers is being content to play a secondary supportive or coaching role in the process of persuasive design “Encouragement” as Albert Bandura might refer to it. Too often it seems that designers are more intent on pushing their own “genius of insight or perception” or the latest “cool technology” as opposed to truely recognising and supporting what users need or the best way to engage with them.
Industrial Design may have evolved from a Bauhaus ideology of making things aesthetically pleasing so that users felt inclined to purchase them over less attractive products and I concede it may have done so with some success, evolving to the point where designers are polished and capable enough to address more than simply a user’s perceived aesthetic need but also more recently their percieved emotional and social needs as well.
What if the ‘users’ themselves are the problem? What if users represent not a coherent set of needs but a messy mix of desires and influences?
From where I’m standing it’s actually designer’s messy mix of desires, influences and egos that are the problem. Through the work on my Masters on Motivational Design and Public Engagement I plan to share with you an alternate approach to Persuasive Design, one that believes in supporting a user’s confidence and skill acquisition process, not diminishing it.
Amateurs versus Professionals? Something I considered here the other day.
Convene versus Control?
Shirky presents the changing media landscape in terms of the sliding scales above. How can we make best use of the media tools that we all have available?
![More Intellectual Gymnastics [Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3091/2563351997_9b1f91701a.jpg "More Intellectual Gymnastics Courtesy of Zaphgod on Flickr")
